


A Thistle's Namesake

by Deaflittlesnail



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017), The Worst Witch - All Media Types
Genre: Ada is shocked, Gen, Hecate gets the best gift ever, Hecate relaxes a bit, Hurt/Comfort, Teeny bit of angst, there may be a hill... and a lot of flower crowns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 12:59:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14379168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deaflittlesnail/pseuds/Deaflittlesnail
Summary: Ada felt awful. She had gone to use the restroom and gotten a call on her way back to the office. Normally more conscious of time passing, she hadn’t thought it had been that long until Deoirdh had exclaimed she needed to start on dinner.Now Ada almost ran down the hall, trying not to imagine the wrath that her deputy would rightfully rain down on her for abandoning her with two young children for multiple hours. Honestly she half expected to find the boys tied to chairs with mouth gags and the strict woman doing her work.





	A Thistle's Namesake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Catmca100](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catmca100/gifts).



Ada had a cousin, a Miss Rainhewn, who apparently had two little boys. Each were small and fae-like with delicate features, hair so fair it looked white in the sunlight and little turned up noses that were littered with freckles. These impish creatures were currently asleep, each nestled into the armchairs that sat across from Ada’s fireplace. A seven year old, Ailbe and the five year old, Aiden. Their mother had left a moment before and the air now felt tight with the care both remaining adults took to not wake the children.  
“How long?” Hecate Hardbroom asked, not having expected this sight when transferring in to look over Ada’s notes for the next term. It was three weeks into the summer break.  
“Just for the afternoon, Hecate. No need to worry.” She smiled. “It’ll be nice to have little feet pattering about again for a bit.”  
Hecate fought the urge to roll her eyes.  
“Why was Cackles the place for their afternoon stay?” She hissed, allowing Ada to usher her over to the nearby desk. She didn’t like her routine overturned like this... especially not by two little boys, drooling in her usual chair.  
“Oh well Adeline had a tea luncheon and I offered is all.” Ada poured tea, offering Hecate a cup before settling herself into her desk chair.  
Hecate blinked slowly.  
“You volunteered-“ She let the words die, showing slightly more irritation than she wanted to. “Ada, we have the term curriculum to finalize. The deadline is tomorrow.”  
Ada sighed, her formerly bright smile fading.  
“Oh you’re right.”  
Hecate felt her insides squeeze painfully. She hated being the one to ruin Ada’s good mood. Anxious to see her lighten again, she leant forward slightly.  
“But I suppose an afternoon wouldn’t actually. Hurt.”  
Ada was sunlight.  
“There we are. It’ll be fun, Hecate. Just a bit of play and enjoyment. We’ll get the work done after she picks them up.”  
Hecate smiled, highly doubting that but unwilling to see her friend upset again.  
“Of course.”  
“And it’ll be good to unwind!” Ada gushed, dipping a third teacake into her tea. “The boys are always so much fun.”  
Hecate felt a headache coming.  
-  
Ada has been wrong. There was nothing fun about watching the two children Hecate was currently alone with. Nothing.  
Aiden and Ailbe were as fae-like in action as they were in appearance. Little mischievous sprites that ran with giggles and had not been still from the moment they had woken up. Hecate was exhausted and it was not even noon.  
Ada was in the loo and despite knowing, deep down, that her colleague would never abandon her, Hecate had begun to count the minutes till she returned. It had been twenty.  
In that time, the boys had startled her no less than ten times, jumping out from behind things when she was looking for them. And now, they were begging to go outside. In tandem: continuously.  
“Please-please.” Repeated without pause in a high pitched mantra that made Hecate miss even Enid Nightshade.  
“Fine.” She hissed, reaching out and allowing each boy to grasp her hands. Their glowing grins were hard to ignore.  
With a twist of her wrist she transferred them all to the garden. There were protections in place to ward off students so she was certain the little imps would not be able to harm anything.  
“What’s this one?”  
Little Aiden, eyes alight with curiosity, held up a gently collected flower.  
“Violet.” Hecate murmured, relaxing slightly into her academic persona.  
“This one please!” Ailbe offered another.  
Hecate bent to see it better.  
“Hyacinth. See the inside structure.” She pointed, watching as the child titled the flower.  
“Oh okay.” He was already running off for another.  
“Miss Harbroom.” Aiden’s little hand jerked on her dress skirt.  
Inwardly wincing at the mispronouncing of her name, she sighed and looked down at him. He had a handful of dandelions clutched in with fist. Bits of grass clinging to the seeding weeds.  
“Those are dandelions. There ready to seed. Just waiting for the wind.” She offered, clenching her hands to keep from prying his hand off her skirt. Another hand from his brother latched on to her other side. Ailbe held up his own fistful of seeding dandelions.  
“We can be the wind.” He challenged, fae-eyed.  
She smiled and gave in. It was just the three of them and she knew no harm would come from this. She bent and knelt, allowing the boys their equal in stature.  
She snapped her fingers and brought a few of the nearest seeding flowers to herself.  
“You make a wish first.” She murmured. The boys each nodded with the solemn commitment of soldiers off to battle. “Then blow steadily for the seeds to go away from you.”  
Aiden tried first, spitting more than blowing, his cheeks reddening as Hecate wipes spittle from her cheek.  
“Sorry.”  
“No harm. Try again.”  
Ailbe has less issues blowing air away from himself, his first flower’s seeds dancing away into the afternoon air. He laughed, clapping at his success.  
Hecate found herself smiling too.  
Aiden closed his eyes and blew again, his little face fully concentrated.  
Hecate dodged the spittle and watched with satisfaction as half the dandelion seeds danced off into the wind.  
“Well done.” She praised.  
The boy grinned ear to ear. They continued in this manner. Each blowing the seeds off the flowers and watching them swirl away into the rest of the area. The seeds didn’t wander into the garden due to wards, so Hecate found no harm in this activity.  
The boys collected flowers until she had a substantial pile gathering in her skirt. She’s sat down, unable to stay kneeling with any measure of comfort. They were children, she kept reminding herself. They just wanted to have fun. They didn’t care about appearances or propriety. And soon, as tiny fingers thrust blossom after blossom into her line of sight to name or explain, she forgot to tell herself to relax and simply did.  
“I can make a crown!” Aiden boasted, his head nestled on the deputy heads lap. “Do you wanna see?” He was wrist deep in flowers before she had finished nodding.  
“Me too!” Ailbe assured her, crawling over her legs to join his brother.  
Hecate remembered making flower crowns as a child. Linking flowers together and twisting leaves and vines to create circles worthy of her Gran. But hand in hand with those sweet memories came the bitter lens of withered blooms and locked doors. She hadn’t made one since her Gran had died.  
“Show me.” She moved closer, allowing the children to press flowers into her hands. Let them show her how to weave the stems. Smiled when her technique was critically examined and corrected by the self-proclaimed experts and proudly let them crown her with two slightly lopsided crowns fifteen minutes later.  
“Mama got us a bunny.” Aiden chirped, nestled into Hecate’s side. He had a predominately violet crown sliding down over his left eye and bits of grass stuck to his cheek.  
“It’s blue!” Ailbe added, still working on a flower fort a step from them. “We named her mittens cause she has white feet.”  
“A blue and white rabbit?” Hecate mused. “Sounds odd.”  
Aiden giggled.  
“She’s not really blue, Miss Harbroom.” He assured her. “Just sad. Mama said all bunnies are sad when they’re alone.” His wide eyes suddenly looked up at her. “Are you blue?”  
Hecate flushed.  
“Of course not.” She blustered.  
“Cause you have Aunt Ada!” Ailbe offered, creating another castle wall with a line of sticks. She watched him stick peonies into the mock stone turrets.  
“I suppose so. She is my friend.” Hecate agreed.  
Ailbe smiled.  
“I love Aunt Ada. She sends us books and sweets. She’s warm and cuddly.”  
“Not like you.” Aiden innocently remarked, unaware of the pain that statement caused in Hecate’s well-fortified heart.  
“You’re not soft like her.” He continued, still leaning into her stiffening side. “You’re bony like Papa.”  
Hecate knew it was silly to be upset by the statements but felt her eyes smart with unshed tears.  
“Ada is very kind.” She whispered. Everything was true, she thought, and she’d only known these children even existed for a few hours. How did their assessment of her lack of couch-like comforts make her feel sad and inadequate? Somehow like less of a person. She’s had children twice their age scream that she was unfair, cruel and even once that she hated them all. But that hadn’t hurt like this little innocent statement about her lack of love handles and extra body warmth.  
“Did your mama teach you to make flower crowns?” Ailbe asked, oblivious to her mental pain.  
“My Gran did.” She shoved her feelings as deep down as she could get them. Ada would collect the children soon. And she would go back to work.  
“Oh. Did you ever have a bunny?”  
The idea of ever having owned a pet in her strict childhood was bitterly laughable. “No I never did.  
“That’s sad. We love mittens. Even if she’s blue.”  
Ailbe abandoned his fort and settled into the grass across from Hecate and his brother.  
“Is your name Hardbroom all the time?”  
She wrinkled her brow.  
“What?”  
“Don’t you have another name? That goes with it?” Aiden asked, in league with his brother.  
“Hecate is my first name.”  
“That’s nice.” Aiden cooed, face suddenly very close to hers. “It’s like a flower huh.”  
“No not really.”  
“It sounds like a flower name.” Ailbe agreed.  
It did not, she inwardly muttered. But the boys were already planning their next activity.  
“There’s a hill, Hecate.” Ailbe exclaimed, as if the hill had magically appeared from nowhere. “We can roll down it!”  
She drew the line at rolling down a hill.  
“Absolutely not!” She stated, both boys now pulling at her hands. “You could be injured. What would I tell Ada?”  
They stopped tugging at her, but didn’t give up.  
“You could roll too.” Ailbe suggested mischievously. “That way we’d all be safe.”  
Aiden nodded so furiously it was a wonder his head didn’t rattle.  
Hecate shook her head; smiling.  
“No. I will not be talked into this.”  
Matching pouts suddenly adorned the boys’ faces.  
“But it’d be fun, Aunt Hecate.” Aiden whined.  
The unfamiliar title seemed to hang in the air just waiting for her to reach out and bat it away. She had no family left and certainly no child had ever called her ‘aunt’ before. It warmed her, made her feel somehow light and heavy all at the same time. An honour and responsibility. And the sudden question of whether or not she was allowed to have that honorific. Ada was a cousin. Hecate was just an Ada-replacement.  
“Fine.”  
The boys pulled her to her feet and she carefully removed her shoes, not trusting the soft dirt to her tall shoes. They didn’t comment on the height she lost and for that she was unspeakably grateful.  
“Won’t that hurt?”  
Aiden asked, pointing at her head.  
She touched her hair, grazing the stacked flower crowns.  
“They are pretty soft.” She assured him.  
“No! Your hair. It’s in a ball.”  
She couldn’t really fault the child for not knowing the correct term for a bun, but bristled nonetheless.  
“I doubt it will hurt anything.”  
Ailbe looked thoughtful.  
“You should take it down anyway. It’s better to be safe and sorry.”  
Hecate rolled her eyes.  
“It’s better to be safe than sorry.” She corrected. The boy shrugged.  
“Yeah.”  
She sighed and reached up to pluck the crowns off her head, giving them to the eagerly helpful Aiden. She plucked the first pin and consequent few more, letting the magic woven in undo itself. When her hair was down, a wavy tousled mess of dark black across her back and shoulders, she suddenly felt exposed.  
She was 12 again, woken up for a drill and tiredly following after her classmates. Hearing laughter and seeing Angelica Wetstone point at her, calling her a wild animal who didn’t own a hair brush.  
“It’s soft.” Aiden chirped, bringing her back to the present. She looked to find him touching the strands he could reach with reverence only a child could truly possess.  
“And pretty. Like Momo’s pony.”  
Hecate wasn’t thrilled about being compared to a pony, but let it go. It was as high a compliment as her hair had ever received.  
“Shall we?” She murmured, starting back for the hill.  
“Wait, your crown!” Aiden scampered forward, holding out the wilting crowns like some long lost treasure. She turned to him and bowed so he could put them back.  
“There you go.” He patted her head. “All ready.”  
-  
Ada felt awful. She had gone to use the restroom and gotten a call on her way back to the office. Normally more conscious of time passing, she hadn’t thought it had been that long until Deoirdh had exclaimed she needed to start on dinner.  
Now Ada almost ran down the hall, trying not to imagine the wrath that her deputy would rightfully rain down on her for abandoning her with two young children for multiple hours. Honestly she half expected to find the boys tied to chairs with mouth gags and the strict woman doing her work. Instead, the office was empty and a crisp note was pinned to the desk.  
‘In garden.’ It read in Hecate’s fine handwriting.  
Ada sighed with relief, taking a quick moment to regain her breath before transferring out to the garden.  
The garden was empty. But there were picked flowers strewn about and flattened grass where the boys had laid out.  
Ada glances around, moving a bit further toward the field and hilly areas, sure to find two sullen boys cataloging potion ingredients.  
Hecate’s shoes were not her anticipated find. She picked one up almost unbelieving. Why would she take her shoes off? She wondered, in shock. Ada knew why she herself would. To enjoy the soft grass and the cool summer temperatures. But Hecate wasn’t like her. She had made it very clear multiple times that she had no time or desire for summer picnics or anything of the sort.  
More flowers and what appears to be a flower/stick fort if you squinted were not far from the shoes. Something shifted in the shoe in her hands and she turned it upside down to catch hair pins. Long and black hair pins, shimmering with a stay-in-place charm.  
Her mouth fell open.  
A shriek startled her and the headmistress whipped around to find the sound. Another shriek had her running again.  
She got to the edge of the hill and looked over. There were the two boys, shrieking with laughter as they rolled down a wide grassy swath of hill, with spongy magicked mushrooms at the bottom. Each time they hit the mushrooms, they’d start rolling back up the hill, laughter nearly constant.  
And she was laughing too.  
Ada couldn’t help but stare.  
Hecate was resplendent in a soft blue dress, full skirt whipping around her as she controlled the mushrooms bouncing the boys. Her hair was dotted with flowers from the crowns of various blooms. But her whole being was light and carefree; as though she’d been released from the burden of care. It was breathtaking.  
Ada suddenly realized that Hecate would not react well to being surprised and muttered a spell to make herself invisible. Just for a bit, she told herself. Just so they can enjoy the rest of the rare treat. Before Hecate locked herself back into her efficient no nonsense shell and the boys went home.  
Hecate slowed the mushrooms, allowing the boys to breath a bit from the rolling.  
“You need to try it too!”  
“Yeah, Aunt Hecate!” The boys shouted.  
Ada felt her heart melt down into her cat shoes. Seeing the boys be so happy with her friend and seeing Hecate’s face light up brought tears to her eyes.  
The potions mistress laid down and let gravity roll her down the hill, bouncing at the bottom to roll back up same as the children had before. It thrilled the boys that she had joined them and both clambered to her side when she came to a stop.  
“You did good!” Aiden assured her, launching himself into her. She winced slightly as she caught him, allowing his arms to wrap around her shoulders and his face to settle into her neck. “I love you.” He sighed, innocent and sweet. Ailbe threw himself down next to her, so they three lay in the grass, only the bright sky above them.  
Hecate wrapped her arms around the warm child and held him close, basking in the affection. He had innocently uttered a phrase she hadn’t heard since she’d been his age. He probably told it to everyone he had the slightest fun with; she thought, but that didn’t stop her from mentally whispering it back or cradling him close, light tears trickling down her face.  
“There you all are!”  
Ada exclaimed, walking over nonchalantly.  
“Aunt Ada!” Ailbe leapt to his feet, running over to her and embracing her around the waist. “You could roll too!”  
She laughed.  
“Oh I don’t think so, Ailbe. But I appreciate the invite, my dear.” He let her go, still smiling.  
“Hecate rolled down.”  
“Did she now?” Ada looked over to make eye contact with the younger woman, eager to reassure her. But Hecate was avoiding eye contact, already disentangling a giggling Aiden and struggling to rise to her feet with the 18 kilo leach hanging from her neck.  
“Be careful, Aiden.” Ada called out. “Don’t hurt Miss Hardbroom. You’re a big boy now.”  
The boy let go and let Hecate settle him on the ground, where he helped her get the grass off her skirt.  
“We were waiting for you and they wanted to go outside. I didn’t see the harm and the protection wards are still in full effect.” Hecate rambled, eyes suddenly wide and uncertain.  
Ada felt a twinge of sadness as the other woman hurried to explain what was a perfectly lovely situation. It made her want to step back in time and rescue the little girl who grew up afraid to enjoy things fully.  
“I’m sorry I got a call and lost track of time. But look at how much fun you had without me!” She exclaimed happily. “Miss Hardbroom is definitely an amazing wrangler.” She tickles Ailbe who now leant against her side. “We should get back now. Your mum will be here soon I imagine. Be sure to thank, Miss Hardbroom for her time.”  
Both boys gave the quiet Hecate a final hug before Ada transferred the three of them back to the office. She could tell that Hecate needed a moment and had tried her best to give it to her.  
“Oh, Aunt Ada!” Ailbe gasped, grabbing the older woman’s hand. “I forgot to give this to Hecate. She said her name wasn’t a flower. But it is. It’ll make her not blue. It’s a Hecate.” He nodded in satisfaction, pushing something into her hands. It confused her, but she vowed to give it to her deputy nonetheless.  
\---------------  
Hecate was back together and hard at work when Ada knocked on her door several hours later.  
“You missed dinner.” She stated, keeping Ailbe’s gift behind her back.  
“I apologize. I was otherwise engaged.” Hecate murmured, not looking up from the paperwork neatly arranged in front of her.  
“I see.” Ada moved to the desk, aware of the tense atmosphere. “Adeline picked up the boys and they were eager to tell her all about their time with you.” She carefully remarked, hoping to get Hecate to engage with her.  
Hecate stiffened even further, back almost crackling as it became more rigid.  
“It wasn’t my intention to take their time from you.” She whispered, avoiding Ada’s eyes. “I will make sure I am elsewhere if they have another afternoon here.”  
The headmistress’ mouth dropped open.  
“What!?” She exclaimed, too shocked to delicately approach. “Hecate, they loved the time they spent with you. They would love to do it again. You were wonderful with them! The crowns, the rolling on the hill, you were perfect.” She gushed.  
Hecate staggered to her feet, nearly tripping over the chair in her haste to vacate it.  
“You-you saw.” She muttered, paling.  
“I’m sorry I intruded, but Hecate, they adored you. That’s not bad.”  
The younger woman glanced away, hands tight fists against her sides.  
“Why can’t you enjoy that?” Ada asked, truly unsure.  
Hecate swallowed thickly but didn’t answer. “Hecate? They had a gift for you. Ailbe said you said something about not being a flower and he named this after you.” Ada held it out. “He said it would make you not blue. I’m sure that means more to you than me.” Ada smiled, watching Hecate gently pluck the offered gift.  
It was a thistle; soft and spiney with purple blue bloom at its centre.  
“It’s a thistle.” She murmured, staring at it.  
“Yes, we both know that. But he called it a Hecate.”  
Ada almost caught the younger woman as her knees seemed to give out and the chair caught her. She was still staring at the thistle, eyes shiny with unshed tears.  
“It’s beautiful.” Hecate admitted.  
Ada gently gathered the now softly crying woman into her arms.  
“Just like its namesake.” She whispered.

**Author's Note:**

> As you can tell, I work with children a lot... thus get a lot of my story inspirations from my interactions with them. Multiple parts of this story come from real life and therefore mean something special to me. Let me know if you enjoyed it!


End file.
